Google Brings 2FA Fingerprint Support to Its Web Browser With Chrome Beta 70

Chrome just celebrated its 10th birthday earlier this month, and even though it’s not quite the super fast and lightweight web browser that made people fall in love with it a decade ago, Google hasn’t stopped trying to cram new features into Chrome.

In the newest version of the Chrome 70 beta, Google hopes to make logging into websites a little easier by allowing Chrome to use your Android or Mac device’s fingerprint reader as a form of two-factor authentication. Yes, it’s not quite a complete way to get rid of passwords, but it’s a start.

For those times you do need to enter a password or some other sensitive information, Chrome 70 will also automatically exit fullscreen mode whenever a page with a dialogue box pops up, which includes anytime a website asks you to enter an address, credit card info, or other authentication prompts.

The second big change in the Chrome 70 beta is a trial run for Google’s Shape Detection API, which allows Chrome to detect and recognise things like faces, barcodes, and text within images. This should help improve features that rely on OCR (onscreen character recognition) so that you could more easily turn a photo of a text document into a PDF, or simply make it easier to scan in a QR code without needing to pull out a second device.

Finally, while Google declared victory for HTTPS in Chrome 69 by removing the “Secure” tag from the URL bar when you visit a compliant site, if you visit a page still using HTTP, Chrome 70 will flash a warning in red so that you’ll know the offending site is “Not Secure.”

If you’re interested in reading up even more on all the other little changes in the Chrome 70 beta, feel free to check out the change log over at Google’s Chromium Blog here.